


The Jericho Fall

by JeanGraham



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 08:56:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20525345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanGraham/pseuds/JeanGraham
Summary: An anthropologist is accused of drugging a planet's native population.





	The Jericho Fall

The Jericho Fall 

* * *

  
by Jean Graham

It was a small rock. Bryn, had she been watching her feet instead   
of the cloud-misted sky, might have seen it before it had wedged   
beneath her left heel and turned her ankle. Her cry of pain had   
brought Mr. Spock and the rest of the survey party running.

Uhura held her tricorder over the injured foot and took a reading   
while Spock and Crewman Ballard looked on.

"Could be a sprain," the communications officer announced. "I'll   
need a medical scan to know for sure."

Spock opened his communicator to the faint squawk of connecting   
static and requested medical assistance. Moments later, a   
transporter beam delivered Nurse Chapel and a portable medikit.

"What bit you?" she asked jokingly.

Bryn made a face. "A rock," she admitted sheepishly. "I didn't   
see it."

Chapel prepared a hypospray and applied it to the injury. "There,"   
she said. "Let's see if you can stand on it now." While Bryn, with   
Chapel and Uhura's help, was struggling to regain her feet, Tom   
Ballard was noting a curious shift in the tricorder readings he had   
been monitoring.

"Sir," he said to Spock. "Our sensors were indicating no   
settlements in this area. Now I'm reading a population center due   
north. A whole city."

Spock consulted his own tricorder and confirmed Ballard's findings.   
"Most curious," he noted. "This would seem to indicate the use of   
a sensor shield of some sort."

Ballard disagreed. "The civilization on this planet isn't nearly   
advanced enough for that."

Nodding, Spock again opened his communicator, but instead of the   
familiar transmission blips, it greeted him only with silence.   
"Spock to Enterprise," he said to it anyhow. "Enterprise, come   
in."

Uhura flipped the grid of her own instrument open and twisted the   
frequency modulator, but was also met with silence. "Something's   
jamming the transmission," she concluded.

"Maybe," Bryn said, standing on her own now, "someone's discovered   
we're here -- and isn't happy about it."

"Perhaps," Spock said. "But as Mr. Ballard pointed out, life   
sensor technology is incongruous with the level of this culture."

"So are sensor shields and frequency jamming devices," Uhura added.   
"Yet somebody down here is using them both.

There was little choice but to head for the city. The likelihood   
was great, Spock reasoned, that whoever was utilizing the advanced   
technology that had stranded them here would be somewhere within   
that population center. It was also possible of course, that this   
someone had intended for them to follow precisely that path, and   
was leading them, literally, into a trap.

Bryn, her twisted ankle still painful but functional, was impressed   
with her first view of the alien city. A fortress of blue rock, it   
rose up out of the stone-littered plane like an enormous hexagonal   
castle, its turreted walls encompassing several square miles of   
thriving civilization.

"Jericho," Bryn said, half to herself.

"Jericho?" Spock repeated, slightly puzzled. "A Biblical   
reference, is it not?"

"An ancient walled city," Uhura explained, and then affected her   
best southern U.S. accent. "Gideon an' his trumpeters marched   
'round an' 'round, an' the walls come a tumblin' down."

Spock gave the communications officer a baffled look, but   
apparently decided not to pursue the matter. "Mr. Ballard, he   
said, "How far is this city from any other settlement?"

Warm wind tossed Ballard's sandy hair as he read from his tricorder   
screen. "Sixty-four point eight kilometers, sir. The people here   
would seem to believe in privacy."

"And there are no roads going in -- or out," Bryn observed. "It's   
completely self-contained."

"The inner-city cultural development level is primitive, Mr.   
Spock," Ballard continued, still reading the tricorder. "Earth   
equivalent circa four to five hundred B.C. Totally incongruous with   
a sensor shield, or any other kind of technology."

While their discussion continued, Chapel took advantage of the   
moment to sit Bryn down and run her medi-scanner over the twisted   
ankle. "I think you're going to live," she joked. The words were   
scarcely out when the tiny scanner began behaving oddly. Its   
indicator spun madly, reversed, spun in the other direction, and   
finally ground to a halt. Chapel stared at it. "What the... ?"

Ballard had just observed similar eccentricities in his tricorder,   
but before he could comment, they were all enveloped in brilliant   
green light and bombarded with an ultra-high-frequency squeal that   
it was impossible to shut out. Bryn saw Spock fall first, hands   
cupped to his ears, face contorted in pain. Then one by one, the   
others went to their knees, trying in vain to protect their ears   
from the piercing agony of that terrible sound...

Bryn opened her eyes -- she had no idea how much later -- to the   
sight of an ornate white marble pillar. The pillar was attached to   
a vastness of ceiling that overhung what could only be described as   
a Roman villa. Bryn had seen rooms like this in antique 1-D   
movies, but never in real life. Presumably, they were inside the   
walls of Jericho...

"What hit me?" Ballard moaned, sitting up to find that most of his   
companions had already revived and, finding their feet, were   
beginning to explore the strange splendor of their surroundings.   
Their weapons and all their instruments had been taken from them.

No one had ventured far when a pillar of transporter light   
delivered a very human figure to a small patio near the room's   
reflecting pool. It was female -- somewhere around forty years   
old, Bryn decided -- with a rather harsh, severe appearance, though   
once she might have been attractive.

"I trust you all rested well," she said to them, though no hint of   
genuine concern showed in the words. "Which of you is in charge?"

Spock took a step toward her, allowing the movement alone to become   
his answer.

"A Vulcan?" she queried. "In command? What is Starfleet coming to   
these days?"

"Your presence here is in violation of the Prime Directive," Spock   
informed her, ignoring the slight. "And the use of advanced   
technology in a culture not prepared to assimilate it is a further   
violation, Miss--"

"Doctor," she snapped. "Doctor D.E. White. I'm a planetary   
archaeologist. This world is called Thorgra. It's my field of   
study. My city. My people. And I don't give a damn about your   
prime directive."

"Indeed," Spock said matter-of-factly. "Starfleet will undoubtedly   
be interested to know that."

Dr. White's smile was crookedly sardonic. "They might be, if   
anyone were to tell them. I've been here for thirteen years. And   
you're the first Federation 'guests' ever to arrive. So I don't   
think Starfleet is terribly interested in what I do on an out-of-   
the-way planet in the untraveled reaches of the galaxy."

Twice, she clapped her hands sharply and a tall door at one end of   
the room was immediately pushed open to admit what must have been   
a Thorgran native. Humanoid, yet reptilian in appearance, he was   
a full foot shorter than the humans, and the stooped posture he   
affected when he walked made him seem even shorter.

White barked an order at him in a harsh, glottal-stopped language   
that none of the Enterprise party could understand. Their   
translators had been taken from them along with everything else.   
The Thorgran answered in the same tongue, bowed, and scuttled back   
out of the room.

"Erzuus will see that you are given free run of the city," White   
told them. "So long as you are aware that no one is able to leave   
here. There are neither doors nor windows in the city walls. We   
are an autonomous unit."

"Surely you are aware," Spock said, "that there are others who will   
come in search of us."

"They won't find you, my Vulcan friend. Neither your ship nor your   
landing parties will detect any life through the sensor screens.   
You found me only because an incompetent assistant turned off the   
shield by accident. He was blocking communications with your   
vessel at the time."

"If the screen was off," Bryn said furtively, "then the Enterprise   
sensors would have read the city the same as ours did."

"I wouldn't count on that. They would have been much too busy   
trying to re-establish contact with you." White scowled at them.   
"After a day or so, your ship will give up its search and leave   
without you. So you may as well get used to the idea. This is   
going to be home."

This lady, thought Bryn defiantly, does not know Captain Kirk.

It was the same thought they were all having in one form or   
another. Nothing short of a supernova would make James Kirk leave   
orbit without first retrieving his first officer and the four   
Enterprise crew members that were with him.

Their first walk through the streets of the walled city had proved   
to be much more informative than Dr. White had probably intended.   
The reptilian natives moved around them with apparent disinterest,   
going about their business as though this cluster of strange,   
colorful aliens were an everyday occurrence. Their behavior   
fascinated Spock, who had seen something akin to it before.

"Do you recall the people of Beta III, Lieutenant?" he asked Uhura   
as they walked.

"Beta III? Oh... the Red Hour. Landru. The Archons. Are you   
saying these people are hypnotized, Mr. Spock?"

"It would explain a great deal."

"Mass hypnosis is difficult to maintain," Chapel eyed a passing   
subject, a young female who shuffled past them stoop-shouldered.   
"Look at them. They look more like they've been lobotomized. Or   
drugged."

Spock, deciding she was probably right, reached out to gently stop   
the female Thorgran's progress. Not surprisingly, she offered no   
protest, not even when Spock guided her to a nearby hay bale and   
sat her down on it. Cautiously, then, he placed a hand to her   
forehead, fingers lightly touching the angles of her face...

Bryn, though she had never seen a Vulcan mind meld performed, knew   
all the same what he was doing. Dr. White may have thought that   
confiscating their translators would keep them from learning too   
much. She was obviously not very familiar with Vulcans, and more   
particularly, not with this Vulcan.

After a few ostensibly uneventful moments, Spock released the   
Thorgran female and allowed her to trudge silently away. He   
watched her go with a bewildered expression clouding his face.

"What is it?" Ballard asked. "What did you see?"

"Some sort of... devotion," the Vulcan science officer said   
cryptically. "A religious adoration that is the All of their   
thoughts and minds."

"Devotion to what?" Bryn wanted to know. "To White?"

"I think not," he answered. "It seemed more to focus upon the   
'Magic' she has brought here."

"Magic?" Ballard echoed. "You mean all of her electronic   
gadgetry?"

"Precisely, Mr. Ballard. To an un-advanced culture, such as this   
one, all technology is Magic."

"So she's enslaved these people with a lot of electronic parlor   
tricks," Chapel said, disgusted. "I'd like to show her a few of   
_my_ favorite tricks."

A small group of Thorgrans strolled past, speaking softly amongst   
themselves but paying no attention whatsoever to the Enterprise   
party.

"A mind meld cannot determine the presence or absence of drugs,"   
Spock admitted. "We would have to regain your medical scanner to   
know for certain."

"The more pressing problem," said Uhura, "is how to turn off the   
mad doctor's sensor shield and her frequency jammer so we can   
contact the ship."

"Well said, Lieutenant." Spock paused, considering. "Such a   
device would require a sizable housing, and a considerable energy   
drain. In one manner or another, it must be provided with fuel."

Bryn looked around her. "I'd be willing to bet White never gets   
far from the power source. And there's only one sizable building   
in the vicinity."

"The Doctor's very own villa," Uhura said, and broke into a   
satisfied grin. "Vanity, thy name is White."

They found the control center after more than an hour spent   
searching the spacious villa. Though many of White's Thorgran   
servant/slaves passed them in the halls, none offered any   
challenge. Bryn had the feeling the poor souls would have been   
incapable of carrying out a threat, even if they'd somehow managed   
to deliver one.

"We have a problem," Uhura said when she had taken one look at the   
instrument panels. All the controls were marked in an alien   
alphabet.

"If White taught the Thorgrans to operate the instruments," Spock   
said, "it is logical that she would utilize their alphabet."

"This stuff looks like antique Federation surplus," Chapel noted,   
looking around her.

"Maybe it is," Bryn said as Uhura began cautiously testing   
controls. "She said she'd been here for 13 years. She had to have   
salvaged all this from somewhere. Probably a ship."

"Makes sense," Ballard agreed. "But how do we shut the damned   
thing off?"

"Locate the energy source," Spock said, following a power cable   
behind the console. "And as I believe Mr. Scott is fond of saying,   
'pull the plug.'"

The line guided them into an adjoining room, where an old-style   
industrial generator churned noisily. There was, however, no   
visible on/off switch, and while they were trying to decide on a   
course of action, a clanging alarm went off somewhere in the   
ceiling above. One of the Thorgrans had apparently decided to warn   
White of their presence after all.

"The fire extinguishers!" Uhura shouted, and Spock, following her   
lead, moved to the wall where old-fashioned canisters of chemical   
flame retardant were stored. He knew what Uhura had in mind. If   
only White didn't arrive to stop them before they could shut down   
the field...

He upended the nearest canister, aimed its nozzle at the   
generator's vents, and pressed the release valve, sending a jet of   
white foam into the exposed vents.

Uhura and Ballard each grabbed an extinguisher and attacked the   
generator from other angles, evincing an almost immediate sputter   
of electrical sparks. The lights overhead dimmed encouragingly.   
A moment later, they went out, the alarm dying with them as the   
huge generator ground to a whining halt.

"Never saw a machine yet you couldn't gum up with something if you   
tried hard enough," Uhura said proudly.

"A pity it was for nothing." They all turned to find the statuesque   
Dr. White in the doorway with one of their confiscated phasers in   
her hand. "You can't really be naive enough to think I operate all   
of this without a back up?"

Before she'd finished her sentence, the lights above came dimly   
back to life, then brightened. The alarm resumed and was abruptly   
cut off.

"Our purpose has nonetheless been accomplished, " Spock said with   
an air of very un-Vulcan defiance. "The Enterprise sensors will   
have noted the shields and pinpointed this city."

"Perhaps," White replied. "But I'm afraid it won't help them. The   
shield is now fully operational again, and it's impenetrable."

"Honey," Uhura muttered under her breath, "you haven't seen what a   
starship's phaser banks can do."

Ignoring her, White directed them out of the generator room and   
down a long open courtyard to a massive pair of doors. These   
opened onto what could only be a church -- a large cathedral-like   
room, with a vaulted ceiling, crowded with docile-eyed Thorgrans.   
One came immediately to White's side, bowed, and uttered what   
sounded like a question. She answered him, then pointed with her   
phaser to a row of chairs that was quickly vacated. "Sit down,"   
she ordered. "All of you."

Reluctantly, Bryn complied along with the others, and shortly found   
her hands secured behind the chair with some kind of rough twine.   
The Thorgrans, once their prisoners had all been tied, went on   
about their ceremony as though nothing had ever disrupted the   
service.

A female at the altar (a priestess?) was greeting a long line of   
supplicants with something small and silver in her taloned hand.   
As each Thorgran arrived before her, she touched the object lightly   
to the neck area, then did something within the hidden confines of   
an ornate wooden box which the Enterprise crew members could not   
see.

"What is this?" Ballard whispered. "Some sort of sacrament?"

Chapel squinted at the object in the priestess' hand. "That may be   
exactly what it is," she said. "Only the 'sacramental wine' is   
that drug we were wondering about. And they're administering it   
with an old-style Federation hypospray.

White gave another order in glottal Thorgran, and the procession at   
the altar came to a halt, collectively bowing its head to wait for   
a further command. The priestess reached into her sacred box and   
removed five separate vials of bright red liquid--one for each of   
the prisoners.

"I have the horrible feeling we're about to be initiated," Bryn   
said, already sick at the thought of White's concoction turning her   
into a human version of the zombie-like Thorgrans.

"Be silent," White snapped at them, and said something else in   
Thorgran. The priestess responded by moving to Spock's chair and   
silently pressing the hypo to the Vulcan officer's throat. She   
waited, but when there appeared to be no immediate reaction, she   
changed vials, proceeded to Ballard's side and injected him as   
well. The human crewman's response was much more satisfactory: he   
groaned and slumped in his chair. A male devotee followed behind   
the priestess and untied her subjects' hands. Spock merely sat   
there; Ballard tried to stand and sank back again, rubbing his   
eyes.

Uhura was next. The priestess had finished with her and was about   
to inject Bryn when Ballard got up and moved glassy-eyed across the   
room to stand at Dr. White's side.

Responding to White's motion, the priestess paused with her   
hypospray hovering at Bryn's throat.

"Come here, Vulcan," White said to Spock. "Must I give you a   
second treatment?"

As she spoke, Uhura got to her feet and went after Ballard. Spock   
seemed to follow her with his eyes, but his movements when he rose   
were far more sluggish than those of his human shipmates. White's   
triumphant smile vanished when her Vulcan conquest stopped, shook   
his head, and promptly collapsed onto the flagstone cathedral   
floor.

Beside Bryn, Chapel cried out, straining at the ropes that held her   
and somehow slipping free of them. Bryn tested her own and found   
that she, too, could free herself. The bonds had not been intended   
to restrain them for long. She caught the priestess' scaled hand   
and knocked it away before the Thorgran could depress the hypo's   
plunger. With the clatter of the syringe to the stone floor,   
another alarm went off, heralding the new intrusion of a   
transporter beam that had successfully penetrated White's energy   
screen.

The crowd of Thorgrans shrank from the sparkling beams of light and   
in their first display of independent thought, began to flee the   
cathedral. Kirk, McCoy, and four securities materialized in the   
midst of the melee, their attention drawn at once to the floor,   
where Chapel was trying in vain to revive an unconscious Spock.

"Help me!" she shouted to McCoy. "I think he's dying!"

Dr. White took advantage of their immediate interest in Spock to   
slip out a side door of the cathedral, leaving a mesmerized Ballard   
and Uhura standing alone against the wall. Bryn saw this and had   
a momentary crisis: whether to follow or remain with the others   
until Spock's condition could be determined. Deciding the first   
officer was in capable hands, she went after the doctor.

White had taken a direct path west of the villa into the smaller,   
more drab buildings of the city. But Bryn had not trailed her far   
when the injured ankle turned painfully under her again,   
effectively curtailing her pursuit. Cursing softly, she limped   
back into the cathedral to find both the Enterprise landing parties   
gathered around Spock. Uhura and Ballard were sitting now, both   
still wearing their blank expressions. The alarm had been turned   
off.

"Looks like a parathyne derivative," McCoy was saying, his medical   
analyzer whirring over vials of White's drug. "It's toxic to   
Vulcans."

"Is there an antidote?" Kirk asked anxiously.

McCoy nodded, flipping open his communicator. "Enterprise, this is   
McCoy. We have an emergency. Tell medical section I need 32 cc's   
of culantin-C beamed down immediately."

While they waited, Bryn quietly borrowed a communicator from one of   
the securities and moved to a corner, thankful that whatever magic   
Scotty had performed to penetrate White's sensor shield had   
apparently also neutralized the frequency jammer. She was about to   
ask him to perform one more act of magic.

"Enterprise," she said to the communicator.

"Enterprise. Scott here."

"Mr. Scott, do you read a lone human female in the city, moving   
roughly west of us?"

After a brief pause, Scott's voice replied, "Aye. We're reading   
her."

"Wonderful. Would you kindly beam her aboard and hold her, pending   
the captain's further orders? Oh, and I'd suggest holding her in   
the brig, sir. She's under Federation arrest for gross violation   
of the Prime Directive."

"Will do. And lass -- we were a bit concerned about Dr. McCoy's   
emergency. What's goin' on down there?"   


Bryn looked toward the altar, where some of McCoy's newly-arrived   
Culantin-C had just been administered to the unconscious Spock.   
The Vulcan appeared to be stirring. "I think the emergency is   
passing, Mr. Scott," Bryn said, smiling.

While Chapel treated Uhura and Ballard with the antidote, McCoy and   
Kirk helped Spock into a sitting position. The science officer   
still looked far from well.

"Your cure-alls, Dr. McCoy, are performing their customary   
discomforting gastronomic acrobatics."

McCoy thrust his lower lip forward in a pout. "Well it may not   
make you feel like dancing, but it beats dying, you green-blooded   
son of a--"

James Kirk clamped a hand to the doctor's shoulder. "Now Bones.   
You'd better save your strength. You have a whole city full of   
patients to detoxify."

That, Bryn reflected as she returned the security's communicator,   
should prove most rewarding. She, for one, would look forward to   
seeing White's intrusive machinery dismantled.

The trumpets hadn't sounded, but the walls of Jericho, all   
the same, were about to tumble down,   


The End

See all of my fanfic and links to my pro fiction at <http://jeangraham.20m.com.>

  



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